Elijah Dixon

Elijah Dixon (23 October 1790—26 July 1876) was a textile worker, businessman, and agitator for social and political reform from Newton Heath, Manchester, England. He was prominent in the 19th century Reform movement in industrial Lancashire, and an associate of some of its leading figures, including Ernest Jones, and his obituary claims that he was called "the Father of English Reformers". His activism led to arrest and detention for suspected high treason, alongside some other leading figures of the movement, and he was present at key events including the Blanketeers' March and the Peterloo Massacre. In later life he became a successful and wealthy manufacturer. He was the uncle of William Hepworth Dixon.

Dixon was born in Kirkburton, near Huddersfield. His family moved to Manchester in search of work, and during his youth Dixon was employed in various roles in the textile industry.

He was radicalised during the depression following the Napoleonic wars, in which northern textile workers suffered considerable hardship. By 1817 the authorities were sufficiently worried by rumours of an imminent workers’ uprising to suspend the Habeas Corpus Act. Dixon, who was present at the abortive Blanketeers' March on 10 March and who had been one of those behind recent petitions calling for universal suffrage, was immediately targeted as a suspected ringleader. He was arrested at his workplace, Houldsworth Mill, Newton Street, Manchester, on 12 March and transported in irons to London, where he was held in the Tothill Fields Bridewell and arraigned before the Home Secretary, the former Prime Minister Lord Sidmouth, accused of high treason. Eventually released without trial in November 1817, he, like Samuel Bamford and Robert Pilkington who had been similarly imprisoned, petitioned Parliament individually without success for redress and recognition that the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act had been unnecessary.

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